Listen, she kept pestering us about her son

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has pardoned three men who had been found guilty of gang raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan. The woman, Sara, and her family found out about the pardon only when they saw the rapists back in their village.

What a surprise that must have been.

“It was evening, around the time for the last prayer, when armed men came and took my son, Islamuddin, by force. I have eye-witness statements from nine people that he was there. From that night until now, my son has never been seen.” Dilawar said his wife publicly harangued the commander twice about their missing son. After the second time, he said, they came for her. “The commander and three of his fighters came and took my wife out of our home and took her to their house about 200 metres away and, in front of these witnesses, raped her.” Dilawar has a sheaf of legal papers, including a doctors’ report, which said she had a 17mm wound in her private parts cut with a bayonet. Sara was left to stumble home, bleeding and without her trousers.

Yes but they didn’t bury her alive. Afghanistan is making progress.

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20 Responses to “Listen, she kept pestering us about her son”

When I read news like this or the other item you posted (from Pakistan) my first reaction is some sort of righteous rage that, in the moment, would persuade me to assent to ANYTHING at all that could change this terrible state of affairs.

Then I catch myself and realize that the only way to change the lives of these poor women in the here and now would be some kind of forced overthrow and reorganization of their whole culture.

I hope we can agree that this isn’t really a brillant move: forget the usual problems with “unintended consequences” of wars – it’s simply not feasible. Nobody has the capabilites, let alone the will.

So, IS there something one can feel, let alone do, other than experience the same kind of impotent sadness that we know from watching starving African children on TV?

Maybe it’s a category error to react to the primitve brutality against women in some of the more backward societies on earth differently, more viscerally, (because human cruelty is more directly evident) than to any other kind of human suffering that occurs in some of the poorer and more primitve countries on this planet.

I hope I don’t come across as equivocating on the pure and utter evil that the examples you cite represent – nothing could be further from the truth.

But as much as is pains me to say this, it may be that this horrible situation of women in Paktistan and Afghanistan is as intractable and far-removed from any kind of solution as the suffering of the pupulations of some African kleptocracy like Zimbabwe or Kongo…

I am not a cultural relativist who says this is “their” culture and therefore it’s o.k. or a racist who claims that “these people” just are incapable of living in a free and open society – I simply have no idea what we in the West can possible do.

“Fostering democracy”, as the tired old mantra goes, is not really the panacea some people hold it to be.

Sorry about spreading my pessimism around here: I was just reading about the head-to-head in the polls in the US before I came here – I guess the prospect of another theocon (or at least neocon) in the White House plus the reality of religious barbarism around the world kind of put me over the top… :(

I guess the question that occurs to me when I read stories like this is: What are we doing (we, here, meaning the West, NATO, or what have you) in Afghanistan? What purpose are we serving. If this kind of thing can happen with impunity, why are we defending governments that are complicity in making the impunity stick? And this continues to go on month after month. Women are imprisoned because they have been raped (that was last week). Journalists are threatened with death because they read something on the internet about women’s rights. And this is all done in the name of what? What do we gain by staying there? What would we lose by leaving?

I have nothing to add except to say Marcus, I find your pessimism honest welcome, and ironically refreshing given the current answers (so-called) on both the right and left.

I grow more cynical by the day and don’t know what can practically be done either. It seems all we can do for now is keep informed and vent our horror and outrage. Pretty impotent stuff, I realize. It’s certainly not the likes of me to come up with answers. I can’t even grasp the enormous complexities of the issues involved. I don’t think a sense of hopelessness is currently misplaced.

Oh, colonialism would be much worse–history indicates that these women would just end up being gang-raped (literally and metaphorically) by their colonizers as well as by their countrymen.

What can we in the West do? That’s easy. We can STOP FUNDING REGIMES LIKE THE FUCKING TALIBAN IN THE FIRST PLACE. We don’t need to overthrow them. We simply need to stop creating them and propping them up. In case everyone’s forgotten, the U.S. put the Taliban in there–knowing its Islamist agenda, knowing its disregard for women’s humanity–because of its hysterical fear of Communism.

And then we put Karzai in there after the Afghanistan war, and propped him up, and now look at what he’s doing. If we were truly non-interventionist, things wouldn’t be perfectly hunky-dory, but far fewer atrocities would be enabled.

Eric MacDonald: I think it’s clear that we’re not accomplishing any worthwhile purpose in Afghanistan, that the *stated* purpose of the war was not a truthful representation of the Western powers’ *actual* purpose (whatever that may have bee).

Well I don’t think it’s quite that simple. I sure as hell agree that we shouldn’t have funded the fucking Taliban in the first place – and we shouldn’t have helped get rid of Mossadegh, either – but I’m not sure that solves much of anything now. And I’m also not sure that all Islamism is the outcome of imperialist meddling.

I agree, Janavir, that the Western powers are not achieving anything useful in Afghanistan. The original purpose was not, however, beneath contempt. It seems to me that the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban would have been a good thing, overall. A regime which gave safe haven to terrorists, opppressed women, and terrorised an entire society, including the destruction of priceless cultural and religious treasures, deserved to be overcome. The problem is that, so far from home, and trying to deal with a people who, for various reasons, having to do with culture, local geography, and geo-political position in the conflicts of the region, there is not much likelihood that this deserved and desired outcome will last.

I’m sorry, Ophelia, I must have had the comments window open during my supper. Consequently, I did not see yours before I posted mine. I agree entirely. I do not think the Taliban were the result of colonialism either. Indeed, Saudi Arabia is populated by them.

I wouldn’t say *all* Islamism is the direct result of imperialism, either. But the evidence IMO suggests that foreign intervention is usually either the primary motivator or an enabling cause.

Eric, I don’t think the original purposes you cite are beneath contempt, either. It’s just that my reading on the subject of the Bush administration convinces me that the original purposes you cite are not quite the same purposes that they (i.e., Bush, Cheney, Blair &Co) were thinking of.

Well, that’s vague enough to be true of almost anything. But I think it’s a mistake to underestimate how much of the motivation for Islamism has nothing to do with foreign intervention. For one thing, I think it’s a big mistake to underestimate the connection between Islam and Islamism. (I know that sounds obvious, but it does get underestimated.) Islamist militancy is not a new thing under the sun, to put it mildly. It didn’t just sprout up during the Cold War.

Of course, Janavir, you and Ophelia could go back and forth indefinitely with I agree-I disagree-I agree. What exactly is being talked about here when Islamism is invoked?

For example, is the very strict and very conservative form of Islam centred in Saudi Arabia a form of Islamism? It seems to me that it qualifies in its sense of ideological unity and purpose, presenting Islam not only as an ideal for Muslims, but as an organising principle for a world society based strictly on the teachings of the Qur’an and the hadith. I know that there are those who do not think there is a direct line of influence running from Wahhabi Islam and, say, the Taliban or Osama bin Laden, but in some of the things that are emerging from Saudi funded mosques in Great Britain, it is hard to see the difference. This applies equally to things that are taught in primary and secondary school books in Saudi Arabia itself, linked earlier by Ophelia.

So, what are we talking about when we say that Islamism is or is not a response to colonialism? Almost anything, I suppose, might or might not be, since colonialism was a world-wide expression of European expansionism for nearly three hundred years. But, more narrowly, is there a demonstrable relationship between jihadi Islam or ideological Islam (Islamism) and Western involvement in majority Muslim regions of the world? Or is Islamism a form of conservative Islam powered by oil revenues?

Jenavir, in reply to your comment at 22:43. Gang rapes, yes. Especially if the UN is involved!

More seriously though, the US did not fund the Taliban. The US funded the Mujahideen against the Soviets. The Taliban were a part of the loose alliance of many in that crowd and were supported by Pakistan. This enabled them to become the most powerful of the Mujahideen factions and take over most of the country. The Northern Alliance, the remnants of the other Mujahideen factions, was still fighting the Taliban on 9/11.

Hysterical fear of Communism you say. I don’t know, 100 million dead is no big deal I suppose.

Cassenders, I think you are probably right that we are missing an important element by neglecting the whole concept of Islamic colonialism. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether Islamism, the political/ideological variety of conservative Islam which has roots at least as far back as the 18th century, is not a reflection of the European incursion into areas orginally colonised by Islam: the Indian sub-continent, South East Asia, etc, even Spain and North Africa. And then conservative Islam looks like a bid to take back lost colonial territory and influence.

Afghanistan is interesting from this point of view, because, as the object of the Great Game played out primarily between Britain and the Russian Empire, it was the one territory that was never colonised by the West. It has, therefore, a continuing symbolic weight from the point of view of colonial Islam, as well as European colonialism (or at least attempts at it).

I know that’s flying a great big kite, but it struck me with some force as I thought of it, so thought it might be worth commenting on in this connexion.

Clearly Islam is instrinisically colonial in its aims. Even if one were unfamiliar with its texts one would know this at a glance from current demographics.

Christianity was not without its historical colonial aspects, of course. Fortunately, it suffered -kicking and screaming all the way – the Enlightenment.

Not only Islamism but Islam (I really don’t see the difference once everything is accurately parsed) is fast becoming the primary initiator of the great Endarkenment. That it has been fomented and helped by western interventionism and imperialism has actually helped its cause in this respect.

Blame for the poverty and suffering usually leveled at Israel and Western imperialism can justifiably be laid at the doorsteps of Muslim despotism, sectarianism malice, indifference and avarice as well.

I only despise Islam more than Christianity today because it is taken more seriously and more literally by more of the world’s peoples than the Western Churches. In the end, it’s all the same inherently murderous bullshit.